#johnfef

John and Feferi is more straightforward so I'll start there. I call this ship The Ultimate Heterosexuality

You capture and cage CUTTLEFISH by the thousands for their own good, and also because they are funny and colorful and you love them. They often swim through the bars of their cages, but that is fine.

Also: we know that John has two redcrushes (not counting Rose, whom Hussie states was a result of John being made really self conscious by karkat's comphet shipping chart): Vriska and Liv Tyler from Armageddon. Who, by the way, looks like this in that movie, and is the heiress of an oil driller

Anyway, the thing with Vriska ends up not working out because she's kind of too much for him - too ruthless, too crazy, too mean. This is what ultimately causes their schism during the ghost pirate treasure hunt, and presumably something similar is why it didn't work out between dead Vriska and dead John.

Meanwhile, Feferi's very interested redrom wise for Sollux, who ends up rebounding with her as matesprits after Aradiabot explodes. However, that pairing shares the exact same foreshadowing as pale erikar:

(red and blue cuttlefish for sollux's red and blue Thing and crab + cherry red soda for karkat).

And the two also spend basically all their screentime sitting in a pile together having feelings jams, where Feferi is clearly preventing Sollux from wallowing in his own misery, which is basically as pale as it is possible to be. So those two are destined for pale and have a pale dynamic anyway, but end up in red because feferi is really enthusiastic and sollux's actual red soul mate just exploded lol.

Now, the reason Feferi gives for developing those red feelings in the first place is this:

CC: Anyway you s)(ouldn't say t)(at about )(im, )(e is a )(ero and )(e saved my life.

So she swoons for the heroic type, and views Sollux as such, since he saved her from meteors during their entry into SGRUB.

Well, you see,

Liv Tyler was saved from a meteor,,,, in Armageddon,,,,

and john is literally constantly getting called out for being way too eager to engage in self-sacrificing heroics

CG: SWEET BLEEDING JEGUS, EGBERT, YOU KEEP BRAGGING ABOUT YOUR IMMORTALITY, AND THEN BRAINLESSLY ANNOUNCE PLANS TO GO OFF AND DO SOMETHING HEROIC! YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE THE SHORTEST LIFESPAN OF ANY IMMORTAL IN HISTORY.

And Feferi is, like Vriska, a Mean Girl... but not a completely crazy one...

FEFERI: Life is dull and uninteresting. FEFERI: I don't know, maybe I'm just a little depressed. FEFERI: You probably wouldn't understand. VRISKA: Sure I would! We all have our off days. Hey, if you need someone to talk to, I'm... FEFERI: Pffffffffffffffffff )(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E! FEFERI: PSYYYYYYC)(-E )(-E-E )(-E-E )(-E-E )(-E-E )(OO )(OO )(OO! 38D FEFERI: )(oly crap did I get you good! )(ey, Sollux! Did you catc)( any of t)(at? FEFERI: A live one jumped rig)(t into my boat! A real suckerfis)(! Woo)(oo)(oo. )(ow do you like t)(at, spider)(ag! Sea dwellers represent!!!

Sooooooooooooooooooo yeah theyre each others' type.

Jade and Nepeta is a little more winding but I believe we will get there trust.

So to understand jadenep first we must understand that Jade's furry thing is a closet metaphor haha. From the moment she's introduced with her furry thing, it's dosed with a heavy amount of shame - she immediately denies having a fursuit because she's not the FREAK kind of furry, okay???

And even after she goes dog tier, she keeps that shit repressed hard; we know from all our other animal hybrids, especially frog aradia, that it is possible to control the animal from leaking out, but it does take a fair amount of effort - Aradia lets out a few involuntary ribbits before she's able to quash that speech pattern, and bird dave caws ironically, but, like. he still fucking caws, yknow?

On the yellow yard journey, Jade basically doesn't woof or bark or bow wow at ALL under normal circumstances, and unfortunately, as per Jade's moirallegiance with Rose, she's kind of a textbook case of Freudian repression specifically - in that it bottles up so hard that it occassionally comes tearing out of her uncontrollably when Jaspersprite provokes her enough.

And we have really strong confirmation that this is the case: Jade and Jane describe their stint under Condy Mind Control as "having their inhibitions removed", so their actions can be understood to be some repressed, buried desires. In Jane's case, it's to be the domme in the relationship; as seen with the way she treats Jake, on some level, she really wants a subby BF who takes orders and looks pretty. Which is why she's set up to be in red with Equius, whose exact type is a Maid who's also of high social status who will boss him around.

As for Jade, she goes full feral doggy mode. Barking and howling and bowwowing with wild abandon. YES she wants snausages. YES she wants to woof. YES she wants to grrr and sniff. Jade wants so bad to let loose and awoo.

So here's the thing with Nepeta, right? She literally calls Jade her favorite human, and in her introduction, she has a drawing tablet she wishes could be a sylladex modus - which Jade has in her pictionary modus. She is also an out and proud catgirl furry who literally opens with unsolicited feral furry RP.

NEPETA: :33 < terezi!!! so tell me! who is your favorite? TEREZI: F4VOR1T3 WH4T? NEPETA: :33 < human kid! NEPETA: :33 < oh of course, you like akwete purrmusk with the black glasses! NEPETA: :33 < he is pretty cute, but mine is jade TEREZI: OH R34LLY? NEPETA: :33 < yes, i have tried to make friends with her, but so far she thinks i am just teasing her!!!! NEPETA: :33 < its pretty furstrating. i will purrsevere though

But if you think about it, DUH Jade thinks Nepeta is making fun of her. Jade is ashamed of her own furriness and has a general problem with emotional bias and kneejerk reactive thinking. An out and proud catgirl bursts open the door; the closeted furry goes oh my god what are you DOING.

Even though, let's be so fucking real, literally nothing would be a better time for jade than some shitty feral furry RP like come on.

Anyway, they're also interesting because they're kind of parallel characters - they're both green furry girls who draw that have crushes on their respective red Knights. And in both cases, these crushes are mondo doomed because the girls have put these cringefail dudes on pedestals. Ultimately, Dave and Jade don't work out because Dave has so many neuroses and problems and Jade honestly gets so fucking sick of them (her convo with dave while she's grimbark is so fucking funny for this, like is this really the time guys), whereas Karkat outright says he knows about Nepeta's crush and isn't interested + there's a convo with jasprose Nepeta has where she clearly likes Karkat because she sees his gooey center, but it hasn't really sunk in that she also has to deal with the rest of him, like him being a frothing lunatic isn't going to go away just because part of him is sweet and kind.

BUT!!! Okay heres the interesting part. They both pick up traits of the other's Knight crush over time: Jade straight up worries that Karkat has rubbed off on her after she snaps at Kanaya and calls her a fuckass; Nepeta clearly learns some irony and sarcasm from rping with Dave, since her "parody" RP of equius in seek the highb100d wouldn't be possible for nepeta at the beginning of hivebent (plus she literally combines with dave for a while haha).